Electricity yield analysis of a 50 MW solar tower plant under Moroccan climate

Abstract

This paper presents the simulation results of a 50 MWe solar thermal tower plant under the climate of Oujda, a city located at North-east of Morocco. For this purpose, one year of meteorological data with one minute step has been collected via a high precision meteorological station installed at the University of Oujda. Afterward, a meteo-file of one hour step has been created and injected to Greenius simulation software, in order to calculate the annual yield electricity production of a 50 MWe solar tower with an open air volumetric receiver and one tank storage system. For an annual direct normal irradiation (DNI) of 1989.9 kWh/m2, the tower produces a thermal energy of 387 768 MWhth and an annual electricity of 144 909 MWhel. The mean efficiency of the tower system under the climate of Oujda is of 13.6%, which can be considered as high and cost effective.